1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information device, an image combining method, and a computer-readable recording medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
An invention is known in which by connecting an information terminal such as a smartphone to an in-vehicle device such as an in-vehicle monitor by wireless communication, etc., the information terminal and the in-vehicle device are allowed to cooperate with each other. For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2010-130553 discloses an invention in which an image received from a portable terminal and an image (operation screen) related to the operations of an in-vehicle device are combined together and displayed on a touch panel provided to the in-vehicle device.
In the invention disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2010-130553, the in-vehicle device determines in what positional relationship the image received from the portable terminal and the image related to the operations of the in-vehicle device are combined together, based on the size of the image received from the portable terminal, the size of the image related to the operations of the in-vehicle device, etc.
However, in the invention disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2010-130553, the in-vehicle device determines the positional relationship without considering which part of the image received from the portable terminal is an important region to a user. For this reason, in the invention disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2010-130553, a region (important region) where information important to the user is presented within the image received from the portable terminal may be hidden by the image related to the operations of the in-vehicle device. Hence, there is a demand of combining and displaying the image received from the portable terminal and the image related to the operations of the in-vehicle device such that the important region within the image received from the portable terminal is not hidden.